Your Child Today and Tomorrow | Page 9

his way, and, having paid the price, the account is squared; so he feels justified in doing the same thing again. In following this course we defeat our own ends, as this kind of punishment does not act as a fine moral deterrent.
Scolding as a punishment is also not efficacious. We are justified in having our indignation aroused at times and in letting the offender feel our displeasure. There is something calm and impressive about genuine indignation, while scolding is apt to become nagging and to arouse contempt in the child.
When we consider the many difficulties of finding a punishment exactly fitted to the offence in a way that will make the offender avoid repetition, we are tempted to resort to sermonizing and reasoning, for through our words we hope at times to establish in the child's mind a direct relation between his conduct and the undesirable consequences that spring from it.
In doing this, however, we should not speak in generalities, but bring before the child's mind concrete examples of his own objectionable acts from recent experience. It is useless to tell John how important it is to be punctual and let it go at that; it is not enough even to tell him that he often fails to be on time. If you can remind him that he was late for dinner on Wednesday, missed the letter-carrier twice last month, and delayed attending to an errand Monday until all the shops were closed, you have him where he can understand your point. Mary will listen respectfully enough to a homily on being considerate, but it will have little effect upon her compared to bringing before her a picture of some of her actions: how, instead of coming right home from school the day you were not feeling well, and helping you with some of your tasks, she had gone to visit a friend just that afternoon.
But reasoning with a child often fails to accomplish its purpose, because the child's reasoning is so different from that of an adult. Unless there is a nearly perfect understanding of the workings of the child's mind, reasoning is frequently futile. A seven-year-old boy who had received a long lecture on the impropriety of keeping dead crabs in his pockets said, after it was all over: "Well, they were alive when I put them in. You are wasting a lot of my precious time." These little brains have a way of working out combinations that seem weird to us grown-ups.
Only with a child of a certain type and a parent able to understand the workings of his mind may the method of reasoning work satisfactorily in correcting faults and establishing good habits and ideals.
No discussion of this subject would be complete without a word on corporal punishment. It is impossible here to present all the arguments for or against it. I am sure, however, that the most enthusiastic advocates of it will admit that it is not always practised with discretion and that it is in most cases not only unnecessary but positively harmful. Children that are treated like animals will behave like animals; violence and brutality do not bring out the best in a child's nature. It would seem that intelligent parents do not need to resort to such methods in the training of normal children.
As suggested by our veteran novelist, William Dean Howells, we have clung to the wisdom of Solomon, in this respect, through centuries of changing conditions. Solomon said: "Spare the rod and spoil the child"; Mr. Howells suggests that we might with profit spoil the rod and spare the child. In the small families of to-day there is no need to cling to the methods that may have worked well enough with the Oriental, polygamous despot, who never could know all his children individually, and it is therefore hardly necessary to use Solomon as our authority.
It is plain, then, that it is impossible to recommend any punishment as the correct one, or even to recommend any one infallible rule. This must depend upon the parent, upon the child, and upon the circumstances. But there are certain definite principles which we must keep in mind and which will do much toward making our task of discipline more rational:
We must never punish in anger.
We must consider the motive and the temptations before the consequence of the deed.
We must condemn the deed and not the child.
We must be sure that the child understands exactly the offence with which he is charged.
We must be sure that he sees the relation of the offence to the punishment.
We must never administer any excessive or unusual punishment.
We must not exaggerate the magnitude of the offence.
If we keep these principles in mind we may not always be right, but we shall certainly be right more often than